In the last Tech Talker episode, we we talked about what Big Data is and how it produces huge databases of information that is processed and leveraged by corporations, government, and scientists to chart trends, make smarter business decisions, or unveil incredible discoveries about our world. Make sure you check out Part 1 of the series on Big Data for more.

The Rise of Social Media
In the past 5 years, the world of social media has exploded and so has the number of users of these networks. Facebook has 1.2 billion users, Twitter has 200 million users, and YouTube has 1 billion views each month!

Now think about this: With all of these people using these social media platforms, there are 100,000 tweets, 700,000 Facebook shares, 3,600 Instagram posts, and 2 hours of YouTube video uploaded every second!

That’s a ton of data being generated by individuals all over the world. The challenge to Big Data has been to make sense of all this information in a number of ways. For instance, Facebook has the largest collection of user photographs any other single company or government on the planet.